Portal to the Online Railway Photos of Canadian Archives
CPR Cambie Station

Introduction

Berton, p. 353: «Almost every leading figure connected with the building of the great railway – with one notable exception – achieved the immortality of a place name. The map of western Canada is, indeed, a kind of coded history of the construction period.»

The Photographic Record

Cambie is one such related station that has been often photographed but never seems to be the outright subject matter. Photographers have been more focussed on showing The Loops with its "four" tracks viewed from the second crossing of Fivemile Creek and set against the backdrop of the Sir Donald Range.

The above images records the early stages of infilling at the near end of the trestle bridge. Commenting on this same image, Poole (p.33) wrote that at the far end was "...the trackside accomodation for the watchman responsible for The Loops."

Now, on the other hand, the following photograph is the only earliest one that we know identifying the building as Cambie station:

The puzzling aspect is that it was most likely taken before Notman's as there are no indications of infilling having occurred yet alone being in progress. It is thus tempting to conclude that the watchman's accomodation was declared a station in 1897 or before.

The Map Record

Unfortunately, the aforementioned date estimate is at variance with other documents. Consider these left and right portions of two maps produced by Poole Bros (Chicago) and held by the University of British Columbia Library. The source map for the left is copyrighted 1897 and corrected to January 20, 1904. On the right, the source map is copyrighted 1908 and corrected to April 6, 1912.

We don't know when the annotations were added in the above Vancouver Public Library photograph. So it appears most likely that the structures in Notman's photo were subsequentally designated a station between 1904 and 1912 in honour of Henry John Cambie.

Henry John Cambie

Henry John Cambie (1836-1928) was a surveyor. civil engineer and the Canadian Pacific Railway engineer for the Fraser Canyon. .

Cambie is also remembered for photographing the "The first expedition sent out to explore the Northern British Columbian passes thro' the Rockies for the Canadian Pacific Railway" in 1879. His party was also notable for the inclusion of George Mercer Dawson of the Geological Survey of Canada, standing at the centre, with Cambie standing to his left.

Berton, pp. 164-165: «…Henry Cambie had taken a distinguished party of surveyors and scientists right across the uncivilized hinterland of northern British Columbia, They started at Port Simpson, "one of the finest harbours on the Pacific Coast," worked their way up the Skeena, and then followed a succession of rivers, canyons, and mountain trails on foot and packsaddle and by canoe, raft, and leaky boat until they reached the Peace River country on the far side of the mountains. In all that journey they did not encounter a single human being.»

In 1887, Cambie settled in Vancouver where he became a prominent citizen. Prior to this, he was documented in 1881 as living in Spuzzum:

The building is the former section house built by Onderdonk in the prior year:

Lavallée, p. 50: «Onderdonk had the advantage of the Cariboo Road to act as a supply route. Consequently, permanent facilities such as stations could be - and were - constructed before the arrival of the railhead. This photograph taken in 1880 shows the station and section houses at Spuzzum, twelve miles above Yale, standing beside a trackless roadbed.»

Lavallée, p. 234: «In the summer of 1884, when the first physical work in construction of the roadbed was undertaken by Onderdonk, engineering supervision of the 61-mile section between Savonas and Chase's Creek east of Kamloops was given to Henry Cambie,…»

Onderdonk's last contract for the Pacific route involved extending the line from Port Moody to Burrard Inlet. Here too Cambie was involved as documented on a couple of related plans:

Postscript

Vancouver Public Libray: «CPR name for the flagstop at the far end of the trestle was Cambie, but it has since been obliterated by the Trans-Canada Highway after the CPR went underground in 1916. Popular public names for this location were 'the Four Tracks' and 'the Loops'. The watercourse in the mid-ground is now called Loop Brook, and it is a tributary to the Illecillewaet River, which is out of sight to the left. This trestle was later converted to stone piers with steel spans, and of that structure, the pillars remain. Today they are maintained and interpreted by Parks Canada as a national heritage site.»

Finally, we'll point out that the image, appearing at the very top and repeated here on the right, shows the siding that was added to park the various cars related to the bridge's construction.


References

  1. Berton, P. (1974), The National Dream & The Last Spike, Abridged, McClelland and Stewart Limited, Toronto, ISBN 0-7710-1332-9.
  2. Lavallée, O. (2007), Van Horne's Road: the Building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, Railfare Enterprises Limited, Toronto, Canada, ISBN 978-1-897252-36-9.
  3. McCord Museum, Notman, William McFarlane.
  4. Pole, G. (2009), Gravity, steam and steel: an illustrated railway history of Rogers Pass on the Canadian Pacific Railway, Fifth House Ltd., ISBN 978-1-897252-46-8.
  5. Vancouver Public Library (2017), Content description of Record 1735.
  6. Wikipedia (2016), Henry John Cambie.
  7. Wikipedia (2017), George Mercer Dawson.

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